Conference Report #2: Week 3

I’m not going to repeat what the prior big wins and losses were, just the ones from last week, but I mention games as part of my explanations. I’m going to give overall rankings and rankings for the period of time. (In a couple of weeks, there won’t be many inter-conference games, so they’ll be more sporadic.)

I’m just going to do the top 4 for this period of time. This might vary. I just can’t always do everything I want to do since I work for a living these days.

Again, Notre Dame counts as an AQ opponent, but they’re ranked in combination with Army and Navy as an independent.

For further clarification, I used to use the term “BCS” for BCS conference rather than AQ, for automatic qualifier. I’m still getting used to this FCS/FBS stuff, but I-AA (now FCS) never really made any sense. In other sports settings (such as high school and baseball), AA is better than A.. It should have been 1A and 1B.

Baylor losing to TCU certainly was not a bad loss. USM didn’t look too good against South Carolina, but Kansas has already lost to an FCS team, so maybe they’re not one of the best teams in the Big XII. There are two quality wins in Washington and Air Force even though they were by the better teams. A couple of the other teams might be good as well. By “good”, I don’t mean top 25, I mean better than many of the teams the Big Ten beat this week (with the possible exception of Notre Dame). There is nothing particularly noteworthy though.

This was a close call with the Big Ten, but since the Pac-10 was 2-1 against the Big Ten and has a better AQ record and no FCS loss, I thought the Pac-10 deserved it. Basically, the losses are understandable. ASU and Washington had no business expecting to win those games. WSU isn’t expected to beat anybody really. Just about every conference has such a team. The Iowa win was good. Iowa was probably over-rated, but that’s still an important win for Arizona, which is perhaps in the middle of the Pac-10. Wake Forest, Louisville, and Minnesota aren’t great, especially considering their opponents, but they’re fairly credible programs. UCLA got a big win as a not particularly prominent preseason team.

Notre Dame was probably an even match-up, but the rest of the wins were pretty meaningless, and it’s a good thing I don’t subtract for close games in the cases of UMass, NIU, and ASU. Iowa/Arizona may have been even or that may have been an unbalanced loss.

If you had told me the WAC would have wins over Virginia Tech, Cincinnati, and Cal and the MWC would be 5-11 to the WAC’s 7-10 against FBS teams (and the MWC were 2-1 against the WAC), I would have told you the WAC was better. But Virginia Tech lost to James Madison and Cincinnati lost to N.C. St. (I don’t care if they’re undefeated; I still doubt they’re good). I didn’t think Cal was good to begin with, and Cal’s win over Colorado doesn’t convince me otherwise. Chances are Nevada is the second-best team in the WAC, so that cuts against that being a big win too. The WAC losses are uglier too.

The Big East really hasn’t beaten anyone when it comes right down to it. The ACC has decent non-AQ wins in East Carolina, BYU, and Navy. WVU beat Maryland, but it would have been a collosal upset if they hadn’t. That’s one of the best Big East team from last year against probably the worst ACC team from last year. The ACC won the more even match-up, N.C. St./Cincinnati.